Category Archives: Personal Stuff

Upgrading to WordPress 2.5.1 – some notes for the nervous

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There’s a few basic rules that we can all follow and learn from in life.

You know the stuff:

  • Never play cards with a man called Mississipi Slim
  • Always walk a mile in the other mans shoes – you have his shoes, and you’re a mile away from him.
  • Don’t eat the yellow snow.

To that I might add – Be wary of upgrading software when you don’t need to do it!

I’ve just upgraded ‘Joe’s Jottings’ to the most recent version of WordPress and whilst it only took me an hour or so, it could easily cause some serious pain for folks less happy with a little database hacking.

I followed the basic upgrade instructions given here – and on completion attempted to log in to the system.  Now, this is soemthing I do every day, so it’s reasonable to assume that I can remember my password.  And, just in case, I have it noted down soemwhere…so…I was rather peeved when WordPress rather politely told me I’d got it wrong.  Never mind…I can order up a new password.

Following the instructions, I received a mail containing a link that included a URL containg a ‘key’, and on clicking on this was told that the key was invalid.  A closer look at the key indicated why; it contained a couple of ‘&’ characters, which would be treated as splitting the key in to multiple fields when entered in to a browser!

Guys…this is REALLY naff!

Anyway – as I needed to get the blog sorted and checked I opened up the database, went to the relevant user record in the database and changed the value of the ‘user_activation_key’ field in the record to a word that didn’t contain any nasty characters.  I then took that word, pasted it over the value of the old key in the URL I’d been sent, and posted that in my browser window.  The result was I soon received the new password.

There is a proper fix – http://trac.wordpress.org/changeset/7837?format=zip&new=7837

Note that if you’ve already requested a password change you’ll have to blank out the user_activation_key field before you can make use of this fix. 

Anyway – apart from that, it now works fine.  But by ‘eck, it was a hairy 30 minutes sorting this out.

 

 

Reflections on “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas”

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I read this short story again recently; it’s by Ursula Le Guin and is one of the most haunting short stories that I’ve ever read.  The only short story that sticks with me more than this one is Parke Godwin’s ‘Stroke of Mercy’, which is stunning.

I’d suggest you go and read ‘The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas’ before you hit the link below, but, if you can’t, to save the plot summary, here we go:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ones_Who_Walk_Away_From_Omelas

I guess the question for me is whether I would choose to be one who walked away; I suppose that in our heart of hearts we all like to think that we have in ourselves the courage and self-knowledge to ‘do the right thing’.  For several years after I first read this story – which must have been in the mid 1980s – I guess at one level such thinking was hypothetical and rhetorical; it wasn’t the sort of world we lived in, after all.  But today I’m not so sure that it is rhetorical anymore, and also I’m not sure I’ve got the guts to walk away.

We in the ‘developed world’ live a materialistic and consumer driven lifestyle, which has had an increasing amount of impact on the state of the world.  For us to have many of our goodies, it could be argued that somewhere else in the world someone else’s lifestyle takes a kicking.  We have an oil-driven economy; if you’re cursed enough to live above rich oil fields then start running now.

We want high-technology equipment; if you’re a young, female, circuit board assembler in a sweat shop then be aware that some of the processes that are involved may expose you to fertility affecting chemicals.  In order to provide us with cheap electronics, some of the safeguards that we adopt in the developed world are ignored.

Have a think about it, please.

I guess my hiking boots and rucksack are still in the store cupboard right now, and I sincerely doubt that I’ll be walking away real soon.  But I do wonder whether I should at least dust the rucksack down and polish the boots, figuratively speaking, for the day when I too start looking to the distant hills of a less consumption oriented lifestyle and choose to walk away from Omelas.

The Bus Book – 14th to 28th April – Jung!

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For many years I have had a great interest in the work of CG Jung.  This originated in my 20s, when I became inteersted in comparative mythology, and read the book ‘The Hero with a Thousand Faces’ by Joseph Campbell.  His references to archetypes in common myth of the hero greatly influenced my thinking, and to this day I regard the day I picked up his book as a great day in my intellectual development.

From here I went to look at archetypes directly, and it wasn’t long before I encountered Jung, and the stage was set for my life-long engagement with Jungian ideas.  And, an interest in Jung helped me get soem of the ‘in jokes’ in TV’s ‘Frasier’. 🙂

“One memorable scene had Niles filling in for Frasier on Frasier’s call-in radio program, in which Niles introduces himself as the temporary substitute saying, “…and while my brother is a Freudian, I am a Jungian, so there’ll be no blaming Mother today.”

Anyway…the books.  How I came to have three books about Jung ‘on the go’ at once, so to say, is a short story in istelf.  My previous Bus Book was about the Knight’s Templar, and I happened to remember that Jung once had a dream about a Templar showing up in a contemporary city.  Digging out the reference to it led me to look through the three books I had about Jung, and I decided that a revision of my knowledge was in order.  So here we are.

At some point I may blog Jung’s own ‘Memories, Dreams and Reflections’ here, but for now it’s books about the man, not by him.

The books are:

Anthony Stevens, ‘Jung A Very Short Introduction’ (JAVSI), Anthony Stevens ‘Jung – Past Masters Series’ (J), and Ruth Snowden’s ‘Teach Yourself Jung’.

These are all good books.  The two by Stevens obviously cover similar ground, and I have a great liking for the ‘A Very Short Introduction’ series.  If you ever need a good ‘crash course’ on anything that these books cover, start your education with the relevant book in this series.

Starting with the Teach Yourself Book – this is a nice, snappy, introduction to Jung doen in the usual ‘TY’ style.  Pleasantly and non-intrusively illustrated with relevant cartoons, each Chapter follows the useful ‘Tell ’em what you’re going to tell ’em, tell’ em, tell ’em you’ve told ’em’ model of educational writing and it works nicely.   It’s a very nice introduction, and can easily be read and assimilated in a a day or so – I would recommend it for anyone ‘fresh on the trail’.  It is a little incomplete; by the nature of the series, TY books are an introduction, but I would ahve expected to see something more on Jung’s alleged anti-semitism, and the accusations of Nazi-sympathies for his Presidency (starting in 1933) of ‘The Medical Society for Psychotherapy’.  These accusations are utter nonsense, but still get bandied around occasionally.  It would have been nice to see an introductory work tackle them head on.  I found the glossary in this book most useful – keeping on top of terminology is critical in a field like this, and this is a good glossary indeed!

I’ll look at the two Stevens books together, as I think that the ‘A Very Short Introduction’ book is best regarded as a later and enhanced edition of the ‘Past Masters’ book.  These are both fine books; the ‘Past Masters’ one was the first book on Jung I bought, a good many years ago, and it’s still a fine read.  However, I prefer the ‘A Very Short Introduction’ one.  Both are solid, academic introductions to Jung’s life and work from an acknowledged expert in the field, and cover the areas that the TY book does, as well as looking in to the anti-semitism and Nazi allegations skipped by that book.  Oddly enough, neither has a glossary- something of an oversight in my opinion – but both are well indexed and, like the TY book, have good lists of further reading.

So…which do I prefer?  My favourite is the ‘A Very Short Introduction’.  If I was pointing someone with a ‘lay’ interest in Jung at a book, I would, however, point them at teh Teach Yourself book first.  If it were soemone with a basic understanding of psychology and psychological terminology, then I would have no problems with telling them to jump straight in to the ‘A Very Short Introduction’.

Salad Bowl or Melting Pot?

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The other day I was reading an old favourite of mine ‘The Networking Book’, by Jessica Lipnack and Jeffrey Stamps
http://www.netage.com/pub/books/NetBook/netbook.html

In one chapter an interesting observation was made about the nature of networks; should a network be regarded as a salad bowl or a melting pot?

Before you start wondering whether you’ve encountered the rogue ramblings of a wannabe chef, I should explain; a ‘salad bowl’ network is one where the individual members retain their identity and collaborate together, much like a well designed salad’s ingredients do.  The ‘melting pot’ network, on the other hand, is one in which the individual members no longer retain their individuality but become ‘one’.

This observation was made about a ‘real world’ network, but it is equally applicable to online networks and communities. My own preference is for the salad bowl, but with a few safeguards.  After all, whilst it’s great to have the individual flavours of the ingredients of a salad be distinctly noticeable, if whole cloves of garlic and a few anchovies were to be added to a salad bowl supplying a whole table, those who didn’t want the strong flavours would be rather annoyed. So, it kind of makes sense to not throw all the strong ingredients in to the bowl when only a few may want to have them; why not have a few alternative salad bowls, or even small side dishes with garlic cloves and anchovies in (and a further dish with walnuts for those of us suffering from nut-allergies) that diners can take from at their leisure without inflicting their tastes on others.

Electronically, therefore, the analogy would be create a community that meets the needs of the vast majority of people, whilst either providing sub-sections of the site for specialists, or even pointing those who require something slightly spicier to other sites.

A classic example here is the frequent cry for ‘Adult Sections’ on web sites, or ‘Games’ sections to include Flash or other online games.  These would, to me, be the garlic cloves or anchovies; a ‘Warez’ section or part of a site that suggest locations for illegal copies of media would be ‘Walnuts’, as such a section is likely to get you in to big trouble with the authorities, just as a walnut where it’s not expected can cause serious illness for an allergy sufferer.

My own approach is that there are already many sites offering these options for people; rather than re-invent the wheel, it may well be better to direct people away from your salad bowl to someone else’s.

Online Culture and the Law of Two Feet

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Well, after 4 years I recently left an Internet Forum which I’d grown very attached to.  The reason I left was pretty straightforward to me, and in my ‘Bye Bye’ post I simply commented that I was leaving because the culture of the site had changed.  I’d always told users of the site that if they didn’t like the place they should just move on rather than throw hissy fits at how the place was run, so it would have been hypocritical of me to do anything else!

I thought that I’d made my reasons pretty clear, until a user of that Forum posted a comment questioning what I meant by culture.  And it’s a good question, that has set me thinking.  So, for what it’s worth, here’s some thoughts on online culture and when to move along.  So, here’s a few thoughts.

First of all, what is meant by culture in general?  As always, you get a lot of choice with definitions.  I liked these three:

  1. a particular society at a particular time and place; “early Mayan civilization”
  2. the tastes in art and manners that are favored by a social group
  3. patterns of human activity and the symbolic structures that give such activity significance. …

I believe they apply equally to an Internet Forum as they do to a ‘real world’ community; what differs is the way in which the culture is expressed.  Online it will be in words and other media, either in real time or time-shifted; offline it will be in words, media, activity and face to face interaction, again either in real time or time-shifted.

I started also considering ‘Ethos’:

“The disposition, character, or fundamental values peculiar to a specific person, people, culture, or movement “

so I guess that the Ethos of an Internet site is the outward manifestation of it’s culture? 

Which led on to ‘Rules of Conduct’, which I’ve always regarded as the stick with which to support the two previously defined carrots.  Within any comunity, there are always rules of conduct backed up by consequences which help maintain the culture.  On an internet site these rules of conduct may range from none existent through to fairly tight. Ignoring for the time being the ‘Laws of the Land’, I think it’s fair to say that in general terms the Rules are rarely required if all users of an Internet site follow the Ethos of the site and respect the underlying culture.  This is, at least, what I’ve always thought to be the case.

Culture isn’t static; it evolves.  The degree of evolution (or even revolution) depends, I believe, on the following:

  1. Rate of turnover of users of the site
  2. Strength of the culture and the degree to which the ‘Site Elders’ (old established members and the controlling authorities of the site) support the existing culture.
  3. The comfort of the vast majority of users with the existing culture.

When the culture changes, there is often going to be a correspoinding change to the ethos of the site, and hence eventually to the Rules.  Should the cultural change be the equivalent of a ‘hostile takeover’ then it is up to the elders to apply the rules of the site to maintain the culture;  should the change be evolution or the acceptance of the need and desire  to change by the population of the site, then the role of the elders is simply to accept the cultural shift and smooth through it’s effects by amending the rules.

My own feeling is that whatever the cause of the change, changes to Ethos and Rules are a given if cultural change takes place or is allowed to happen.  Should those changes not happen, the result is a community which is almost schizophrenic; the culture may have changed but the public ethos and rules may not have altered to go with that change, resulting in inconsistency.

And so to the rule of two feet…

The ‘Rule of Two Feet’ or ‘Law of Two Feet’ was something I encountered many years ago; “If something isn’t working for you, go somewhere else and find something that WILL work for you”.  Another, rendition of this Law is “The people who attend are the right people”.  It is a Law driven by culture and ethos; if follwoed by people it does tend to prevent cultural change and development in a community except in very specific ways.

  1. If enough people walk away, the culture may collapse or be changed to stop the loss.
  2. The people who walk away may, if sufficient in number, gather together to form a new culture with which they are happy.

What usually happens to people who follow the Law is that they find communities with cultures and ethos’ that suit them.

Which brings me to my final observation…why, if an online community has a culture and ethos that someone finds unbearable, do they spend large amounts of time and energy fighting to change it?  Why not go and establish oneself elsewhere?

Life is what happens…

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when you’re making other plans, according to John Lennon!

And it certainly seems to be the case that blogging is not what happens when you’re assailed by the requirements of life and the ‘day job’!

What’s been difficult in the last couple of weeks is stocking ideas up for the blog but never seeming to be in a position when I can actually settle down and do anything.  Now, there are two ways I can look at this; one is that I’ve been so busy that I’ve just not been able to touch base with a computer, or the other is that I’ve just prioritised blogging downwards for a short while!

I’m afraid that I have to plead guilty to the latter; a side effect (which I should have guessed!) of Facebook was that I suddenly found myself touching base with friends I’d lost contact with a decade ago, talking about new projects and new ideas.  All good stuff but something of a phenomenal show stopper!

So…be prepared for Facebook to seriously damage your ability to do anything else!

Of course, the day job also had it’s impact, along with a little more socialising with real life friends than usual. 

But, enough excuses.  I have ideas, I have a little more time, so I’d better get going.

The Bus Book – w/c 31st March – Libra

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Don DeLillo’s Libra takes on the great rift in the American psyche; that which opened up on 22nd November 1963 when Kennedy was assasinated.  Whatever the nature of the man, one thing became true form that point on – that bad things can indeed happen to and in the Home of the Free.

This is a labyrinthine book on a number of levels.  It is a semi-fictional account of the life and death of Lee Harvey Oswald.  The author makes no attempt to separate fact from fiction; indeed, as Oswald has entered the status of myth it would probably be nigh on impossible to do so.  The book follows Oswald’s youth, his time in the US Marines, his assignment to the U2 base at Atsuga, his defection, his return, and the fateful day in November 1963 when he and history collided on Dealey plaza.

The book also follows the activities of three disaffected CIA veterans of the Bay of Pigs invasion, and how their initial thoughts of a faked assasination attempt on JFK eventually give way to soemthing more sinister.

Parts of the story are seen through the eyes of Nicholas Branch, a retired CIA agent who is now tasked with assembling the definitive story of the assasination of JFK.  He is provided with all sorts of information and meta-information about the assasination – even down to the dreams of witnesses to the event.  A CIA information specialist he knows as ‘The Curator’ keeps the information coming, thickening the fog and building new paths in to an already infinitely complex maze.

Over the years it is quite possible that no other single event in human history with one exception has been examined so closely with so little agreement as to what actually happened.  And the other event is the Crucifixion.

The rest of the book is almost stream of conciousness from Oswald, the CIA agents, Jack Ruby and all the other bit part players in the drama.  The labyrinths I mentioned are of information, conspiracy, identity and intention.

 It’s a stunning book.  I am actually quite haunted by parts of it.  As a Sunday Times critic wrote – “This, you feel, is America, and the bad news starts here.” CS Lewis, who wrote about the ‘Inner Ring’ of people more in the know than you are, also died on 22nd November 1963; I’ve often regarded this as ironic. 

Read it – it reminds me, for some strange reason, of ‘The Name of the Rose’.  I have no idea why.

A final observation…I bought this book in Leeds and started reading it on the evening train back to Sheffield.  A young lady opposite asked me what I was reading, and I told her.  A young man in a neighbouring seat then looked up and showed what he was reading; The Illuminatus! Trilogy – a novel about an all-encompassing conspiracy.  Whether The Curator would forward notes on such a random meeting to Nicholas Branch…who knows.

The guilty pleasure that is H P Lovecraft

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Over the last couple of days I’ve taken a break from Don DeLillo’s ‘Libra’ and have returned to one of my all time favourite horror / science fiction writers, H P Lovecraft.  In particular, I’m re-reading his novella ‘The Case of Charles Dexter Ward’ – an everyday tale of international grave robbing, ghoulish possession and dealings with dark forces, spread over the centuries.

HPL is a definitely un-PC writer to admit to enjoying.  Even as a fan there are some phrases used that today slap you in the face as being patronising or racist, but given the attitudes prevalent in much fiction in the first 25 years of the 20th Century, I’m willing to cut some slack.  His ‘purple prose’ is well known – just mention the words eldritch, un-nameable and squamous as adjectives to anyone with a passing knowldge of his books, and you’ll immediately elicit his name.

I recently bought replacement volums of his stories – my existing ones had fallen apart after 20 years of reading.  The first time I read any Lovecraft at all was in a Corgi edition in my teens – I remember the book as having a purple cover – very apt, I thought – and it was part of a ‘Science Fiction Classics’ series.  The first stories of his I remember are not, oddly enough, from the C’thulhu Mythos – they were ‘The Colour out of Space’ and ‘The Shadow out of Time’ – pretty much straight science fiction in most respect.  His Venus set ‘In the Walls of Eryx’ was pure 1930s science fiction, with the ilmage of Venus as an overgrown jungle world.  Once I got hooked in to the C’thulhu mythos, it was downhill all the way.  I also have a neat collection of ‘Mythos Stories’ from other authors which are great fun, and wrote my own Necronomicon related short story set in Victorian England.  Great fun!

As for the Mythos, it’s struck me recently that many of the Mythos stories I actually like best are not by Lovecraft himself!  I think one of the amazing things about the Mythos structure is how it’s been used (and occasionally abused) by an incredibly wide range of writers; just as most writers will do a Holmes Homage, most science fiction authors will end up doing a Mythos related tale somewhere along the way.  My favourite Mythos tales probably include those of Stephen King (‘Crouch End’) and Colin Wilson – particularly his ‘Return of the Lloigor.

I remember some years ago killing time in London one evening (during my film making days) in a Cybercafe on Tottenham Court Road writing a Mythos tale based around a creature that could inhabit electronic networks.  Oddly enough, the email in which I sent the story to myself mysteriously disappeared in transit.  It did make me wonder…

Back to Charles Dexter Ward – true Gothic Horror.  There is a section of the book where even now I have to sit back and think hard, following the disguises and double identities of the characters in the novel – but it’s a great story.

If you’ve never read any Lovecraft, and you don’t mind a bit of prose that is slightly purple, I suggest you start with ‘The Call of Cthulhu’ to kick you off on the Mythos stories.  ‘The Music of Erich Zann’ is an interestingly understated short story that always reminds me of H G Wells’ ‘The Platner Story’.  ‘The Mountains of Madness’ is a good read as well – set in the Antarctic and deals with the discovery of ancient alien life on Earth (part of the Mythos).

In the words of an old newspaper review…go forth to HP Lovecraft and shudder!

The Bus Book – w/c 24th March – The Social Entrepreneur: Making Communities Work

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Andrew Mawson (now a Cross Bencher in the House of Lords) has written a very important book with this work.  It chronicles his experiences in Bromley-by-Bow, an impoverished area of East London, from his arrival there as a United Reform Church Vicar in 1984 through his driving of the the development of social enterprises, health centres and other vital services to this community – with the whole hearted support of the community and despite the best efforts of local and national Government.

I picked this book up almost by accident and I’m so glad that I did.  I found it incredibly motivating – whilst there are some good, practical hints in there it’s more of a history and how problems were coped with as they arose – I think the author should settle down and write a further book ‘Practical Lessons from Bromley-by-Bow’ – I would certainly buy a copy!

Rather than pontificate too much, I’ll refer you to an article by Andrew Mawson himself:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/jan/09/socialenterprises.regeneration

I have to say that the experiences he documents reflect the sort of experiences I’ve had in a much smaller way with many funding organisations and local authority, national Government and EU bodies over the years.  This was the original impetus for my CommunityNet and CommunityHost projects, and reading this book has made me want bigger and better things for the projects that I’m involved with.

I agree with Mawson’s basic tenets; it is essential that anyone wishing to develop their community needs to get buy in from the bottom up – from the people who are suppsoed to benefit from the efforts being expended.  This means involving these people, and letting them become the architects of their own solutions – not watchers and observers.  This is the ‘CommunityNet Philosophy’ that I elaborate on here; I now feel in excellent company.

An excellent and motivational book; one that I whole heartedly recommend!

Will no one think about the children…

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I’m a big fan of ‘The Simpsons’ and in one episode there is a morally outraged female character who keeps screaming the expression ‘Will no one think about the children’ whenever something crops up.

I was reminded of this sort of ineffective moral indignation when I encountered this article in The Sunday Times about the suggested censorship of sites such as Bebo, MySpace and acebook.

http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article3635685.ece

Whilst I can see that there are posts and material that do require removing, I’m less convinced of the suggested ‘Remove within 24 hours of complaint’ approach.  A concerted effort by a few hardliners in some of our less liberal religious and social movements would soon have the websites removing all sorts of material.

Nothing is mentioned of appeal processes, etc. and as many of tehse sites are based in the US there is the US Constitutional Issue of Free Speech, as enshrined in the 1st Amendment.  The solution that I would adopt were I a US web site owner confronted by this sort of daft legislation from Nanny Brown’s Government would simply be to block access to the site form any UK based ISP.

And the comment about allowing children un-supervised use of the Internet not being like TV, but like letting your children play outside un-supervised is yet another issue.  When I was a child, from the age of about 10 onwards I WAS allowed to roam locally, in daylight, unsupervised.  Along with most other children of my generation.  However, I was responsible enough to have earned the trust of my parents.

Perhaps a major thing for HMG to take away from the curent fetish with protecting our children is that responsibility and supervision begins and should, under normal circumstances, end with the parents.  The state has no role unless things have gone very wrong; perhaps the fact that such studies are being commissioned indicates that several years of politically-correct nannying by this and previous Governments has generated a generation of parents who’re scared to actually be parents and state clearly to their children what is acceptable and what is unacceptable.